Many people use drugs or alcohol as a coping mechanism, so changing your relationship to these substances can be daunting. Often people begin to use because it gives them something that they need. Maybe it helps them push past social anxiety. Maybe it helps them relax after a stressful day at work. Or maybe it helps them forget a past trauma and sleep through the night.

Drugs can begin as a solution to a problem and end up as a problem of their own.

Are drugs and alcohol really the problem?

There’s been a long-standing story that drugs in and of themselves are the primary cause of addiction. The idea is that certain drugs have chemical hooks that causes anyone who takes them could be vulnerable to addiction.

In response, people try to treat addiction by attempting to eliminate drugs. On a societal level, the War on Drugs attempted to stop the spread of addiction by criminalizing their use. On an individual level, the dominant story is that the only way to stop addiction is to opt for sobriety.

Yet research has shown that this idea is just not true. Most of our understanding about drug addictiveness comes from studies on rats, in which they were able to consume heroin on demand by the press of a lever.

“[M]y colleagues and I re-examined some simplistic rat research, which was based on a contrivance that allowed rats to inject a jolt of heroin by pressing a lever on the wall. Under certain experimental parameters, these rats would dope themselves silly, not even taking time out to eat...

But these rats, a highly gregarious species, were isolated for life and tethered with rubber tubing that catheterised their jugular veins. Such extreme isolation and discomfort might well make euphoriants irresistible. We tested this possibility by building Rat Park, where rats could enjoy the company of their fellows, raise their pups and run around freely.

We gave them unlimited access to morphine and control rats, kept in isolation, were also given free access to morphine. The isolated rats consumed lots of morphine, while the rats in Rat Park took relatively little.”

What does that mean for me?

If addiction is a complex response to a variety of factors, the best way to curb that addiction may be to first unpack exactly what those factors are. What drives the behaviors that you find problematic in your life? And what other possibilities exist for different ways of being?

Now, we’re not saying that quitting is a bad idea. Abstinence may be the best solution for you if drugs and alcohol are extremely triggering or repeatedly stand in the way of what you desire.

However, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to addiction, just as there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to anxiety or depression.